Superman III

Name:

Superman III

Company:

Atari

Model #:

RX-8038

Programmers:

Dave Comstock & Paul Donaldson (Programmers),
Brad Fuller (Audio)

Year:

1983

Released?

No

Notes:

Based on the 1983 movie

When the first Superman movie was released it met with wide acclaim
as a faithful adaptation of the classic comic book series Shortly
afterwards Atari (then owned by Time Warner who just also happened to
own DC Comics) released the first Superman game for the Atari 2600. Much
like the first movie, this game (programmed by John Dunn) also met with
positive reviews. Unfortunately by the time the third Superman movie
rolled around, the series had gone downhill. Making a game based
on a bad movie is always tough, but when you're pressed for time too,
things never turn out right...

For those of you who have blocked Superman III from your
memory, I'll sum up the plot (or what passed for a plot anyway). Superman
III revolved around Gus Forman (played by Richard Pryor who must have
needed money badly to make this dog), an idiot who just happens to be
a computer genius. After being discovered stealing millions
of dollars from his company by siphoning off the half cents that get rounded
off of each paycheck (this is actually a real scam called the 'Salami
Technique'), he is talked into hacking into a weather control satellite so his boss (Ross) can corner the coffee market. Of course this gets Superman involved who stops the satellite
and saves the day yet again (yawn). This upsets Ross to no end and
he orders up some homemade Kryptonite to stop Superman once and for all.
Of course no one knows exactly what Kryptonite is made of, so they
guess and add tar as the mystery ingredient. The synthetic version
doesn't kill Superman, rather it separates him into two beings; one good,
one bad. Oh and Gus also builds a super computer to destroy Superman
in addition to the Kryptonite. Like I said, the plot was REALLY
bad...

The plot for the game revolves around Superman's fight
with the super computer at the end of the movie. But what about
that cool game Ross played in the movie you ask? As it turns out
the 'game' was nothing more than an elaborate computer sequence designed
by Atari specifically for the movie. The actual game that was developed
didn't have to do with this sequence. This was because it would
have been impossible to do anything like it on the Atari 8-bit computer
(same deal as with the Last Starfighter game).

As mentioned before, the game revolves around Superman's
fight with the super computer. The game board is separated into
eight city blocks with the super computer in the center. You play
the role of Superman (naturally) who must fly around the screen destroying
energy pulses being sent out by the computer with his heat vision. These
energy pulses will roam the screen in a random pattern, often snaking
around for a few moments before actually hitting a city. If a pulse
hits a city it will immediately be drained of all its power and will go
dead (all the lights will go out). Once a city is dead, if a probe
hits it again it will catch fire which Superman will have to put out with
his ice breath. If a fire burns too long the city will turn to rubble
and be permanently destroyed. Hitting the pulses is very difficult
due to the fact that Superman is always moving, and it's really easy to
overshoot your target. The computer will also shoot out green Kryptonite
probes which will disable Superman for a few moments (afterall, you can't
really kill the man of steel). Also keep an eye out for people that
randomly appear during the later rounds whom Superman can grab for extra
points. The whole game plays somewhat like Missile Command in the
round, but doesn't have the same addictive fast paced gameplay.

If the game has one flaw (other than being slightly slow
paced), it's the controls. Superman is simply too difficult to control! Superman
is always moving forward, and the player must direct him using the joystick
by pressing left and right to change the direction he's moving. Although
you can control Superman's speed by pressing up and down, he always seems
to be moving too fast. And while the board is rather large, it seems
too small for the fast flying Superman (I guess that's the price you pay
for moving faster than a speeding bullet). Fine tuning the controls
would have greatly increased the the games playability.

So why did Superman III go unreleased? It was determined
that after playtesting by focus groups that the game was not a strong
enough candidate for release (ie. good, but not good enough). Not
surprisingly the focus groups cited the difficult controls as their main
complaint. Although a prototype 5200 box has been found, there is
no evidence to suggest that Superman III was ever planned for the 5200.
In fact the part number (CX-5222) was actually assigned to Jungle
Hunt. This may have been due to a miscommunication with the art
department.

BTW if the title music sounds familiar it's because it
was later reused for The Final Legacy (Brad Fuller also did the audio
for that game as well).